Olfactory Injustice

Abstract

This paper studies ways in which olfactory art can be political and disruptive: how it may serve to challenge audiences’ perceptions in otherwise deodorized exhibition spaces, for example, and how smell-art pieces may trigger disruptive events which undermine confirmed visual habits of art consumption. How does this work? Medical research on olfactory sensations shows that we process smell on a more emotional level of empathy than visual aesthetic information. As a case in point I analyze Teresa Margolles' art work Vaporización (2002); my contribution intends to demonstrate how olfactory art such as this employs the moment of interference through smell in a visual art world in order to activate empathy on a political level.